Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

A senior al-Qaida military commander instructed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not to kill Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 and said that Pearl should "be returned back to one of the previous groups who held him, or freed."
But Mohammed, the supposed mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, says he killed Pearl anyway, according to military documents released by WikiLeaks on Monday and published by the Los Angeles Times, The Australian and other news organizations.
AP
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is shown after his capture in 2002. Military documents released ...

WASHINGTON -- Secret documents about detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison reveal new information about some of the men that the United States believes to be terrorists, according to reports about the files released by several American and European newspapers. The U.S. government criticized the publication as "unfortunate."
The military detainee assessments were made public Sunday night by U.S. and European newspapers after the WikiLeaks website obtained the files. The records contain details of the more than 700 detainee interrogations and evidence the U.S. had collected against these suspe...

WASHINGTON -- Yielding to political opposition, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged henchmen will be referred to military commissions for trial rather than to a civilian federal court in New York.
The families of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks have waited almost a decade for justice, and "it must not be delayed any longer," Holder told a news conference.
Holder had announced the earlier plan for trial in New York City in November 2009, but that foundered amid widespread opposition to a civilian court trial, ...

It was a top priority in his 2008 presidential campaign, but it appears that Barack Obama won't be closing Gitmo anytime soon.
The White House announced on Monday that military trials will resume at the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, where a new executive order signed by the president now creates a system in which prisoners could be subject to indefinite detention.
Besides reigniting the debate surrounding the legality of military tribunals, the decision will also likely allow the prosecution of Guantanamo detainees such as alleged 9/11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who wasn't t...

Though no one would have guessed it during his inauguration week over two years ago -- when President Barack Obama boldly ordered the closure of Guantanamo's detention facilities and the immediate suspension of military commissions -- he has just reversed course and lifted the ban on military trials for detainees.
And as most would also find surprising, it's actually a win-win for his administration.
First, it shows conservatives and independents that Obama is willing to govern from the center. Polls show most Americans support holding al-Qaida and Taliban-linked enemy combatants at Guantana...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's decision to resume military trials for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will open the door for the prosecution there of several suspected 9/11 conspirators, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Obama's order, which reverses his move two years ago to halt new trials, has reignited arguments over the legality of the military commissions, despite ongoing U.S. efforts to reform the hotly debated system.
But fierce congressional opposition to trying Mohammed and other Guantanamo detainees in the United States left Obama with few options. An...

NEW YORK -- The first, and possibly the last, Guantanamo detainee to have a U.S. civilian trial was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, a case that nearly unraveled when the defendant was convicted on just one of more than 280 counts.
Ahmed Ghailani, who served as Osama bin Laden's cook and bodyguard after the bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, sought leniency, claiming he was tortured at a secret CIA detention site after his arrest in Pakistan seven years ago. But U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan imposed the maximum sentence, saying t...

American journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but more than a dozen Pakistani militants believed to have been involved in Pearl's 2002 kidnapping and slaying have not been captured.
That's the conclusion of a report released today by the Pearl Project, an investigative journalism project at Georgetown University.
Mohammed, who is being held in Guantanamo Bay awaiting trial on terrorism charges, has not been charged in Pearl's death. According to the new report, Pakistan's government considers the Pearl case closed and the United States is no...

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks, beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, according to a yearslong investigation into his murder.
U.S. investigators used vein analysis to confirm that the hand seen on the video of the 2002 execution belongs to Mohammed, a senior al-Qaida operative who confessed to the killing while in American custody but has not been charged with the crime.
The findings -- along with a host of other revelations about the reporter's murder -- are the work of The Pearl Project, a three-year investigation that deta...

KARACHI, Pakistan -- The four men imprisoned for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were not present during his beheading but were convicted of murder because Pakistani authorities knowingly relied on perjured testimony and ignored other leads, says a report released Thursday.
The results of the Pearl Project, an investigation carried out by a team of American journalists and students and spanning more than three years, raise troubling questions about Pakistan's dysfunctional criminal justice system and underscore the limits U.S. officials face in relying on Pakistani authoriti...